McKinsey's new article on open innovation

I just read the McKinsey Quarterly's just-published article,

Reena Jana

June 23, 2008, 12:00 AM EDT

I just read the McKinsey Quarterly’s just-published article, “What’s New in Open Innovation?” — it’s available online. Most of the article features an overview of what’s been going on in terms of businesses co-creating with customers and consumers. You know, “user-generated content” or “crowd-sourcing.” Sure, it includes some stale news, such as what’s been going on in Second Life. That this example seems so out-of-date a year after the media (BW included, of course) heralded it shows you how quickly what’s hot online, in terms of communities, can fade.

A rarely discussed area mentioned in the article, though, is worth some investigating: how B-to-B businesses are using co-creation. The example McKinsey gives is a brief nod to SugarCRM’s customer-relationship-management software, which the company’s clients customize.

Worth reading: the authors’ list of how-tos has some sage advice. Nuggets include the suggestion for establishing clear rules, such as making sure it’s evident who owns what in terms of a co-creation’s IP, and clear roles, in terms of asking certain groups to co-create a specific aspect of a product or service, rather than encouraging a chaotic free-for-all. These bits of advice could be some of the, well, clearest and most valuable guidelines for businesses looking to experiment more with the concept of “co-creation.”

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